Thanks For Calling

I would rather be infested with fleas, bed bugs, cooties and head lice than have to deal with another spam phone call! I’m sick of it. I’m on all the “no call” lists, and I still get nearly 20 calls a day from robot callers, call center solicitors, or pitch men. We even pulled our home line and now exclusively use our cell phones, and we still get the “nuisance” calls. It’s an incredible waste of time and frankly a significant pain in my backside to answer every one of these calls.

So I don’t.

We all have the ingrained, knee-jerk reaction to answer the phone when it rings. But don’t you feel like kicking yourself when you do answer and get stuck taking some inane survey, or listen to a vacation property pitch, a drone rambling on about health insurance, or saving the whales, or even worse, having dead air on the other end, while the random dialer was sending you to the first available operator. Most of us are just too nice to hang up, and even though some calls may only take less than a minute to deal with, they can still add up to a ton of lost opportunity, time, and frustration.

But alas, I’m here to tell you that you can control this daily tele-plague that rears its ugly head every day around dinner time.

You can always decide not to answer calls from a number outside your calling area. Still, with the portability laws, your customers and prospects may have moved from elsewhere in the country to your city and moved with their phone numbers.

So, there are a couple of things you can do. One, you can talk to all of them and waste time. Or, you can speak to all of them but come up with some cute line like, “Oh golly, I was just waiting for you to call. I’m pretty busy right now, but if you’ll give me your home number, I’ll call you this evening and we can talk then!”

Many phone carriers have a service to intercept spam and nuisance calls. It’s free and can be set up by calling the carrier. We did that. I still get the calls—not as many, mind you, but I’m still getting them.

The preferred approach has worked well over the last few years. Many phones today can create custom messages, which I can create or select from and send to any incoming caller. The message can be as simple as, “Sorry, but I’m on a call right now. Please leave a message, and I’ll return the call as soon as possible.” This message alone will run off 90% or more of all nuisance calls. My strategy, and yes, I consider it a strategy, is to let 100% of my calls, without caller i.d., go to voicemail. If the caller is a client or a known business contact, and they leave a message, I will call them back immediately. I also request that they take a moment to purchase caller i.d. This service immediately lets me know who they are, and I can address them by their name when I answer.

This approach will save you time and effort and eliminate so much frustration that you’ll quickly see its value. The bottom line is that to be effective at whatever you do, you must master the art of managing noise. And the best way to do that is to say no!

Ultimately, this is nothing more than an Interruption of your focus. And we can get “addicted” to interruptions. If you don’t believe me, try this experiment. Turn your phone on the loudest vibration you can. Then sit at a lunch or meeting in your favorite restaurant and wait for your phone to ring. Once it vibrates, watch as everyone grabs their phones and checks to see if it’s theirs that’s “interrupting”. It’s actually funny, but the deeper point is made. We are addicted to interruption, and we crave more interruptions. Research shows that after you experience a telephone or text interruption, it takes your brain 17 minutes to get back focused. If you allow your phone to ring, vibrate, or play a rock ‘n ‘ roll anthem (mine was Back in Black by AC/DC) whenever someone calls or texts you, you will never be focused entirely on your job. I’m not suggesting you get rid of your phone, but you must manage the process. If you don’t, the process manages you. The best solution is to set a time to check your messages and shut off the ringer, vibration, or notification noise. Put it on mute in two-hour increments.

Trust me. Most of the calls that you’ll get, you don’t want to talk to anyway.